Cognitive Ability And Household Consumption

There has been insufficient consumption demand in China for a long time,Boosting domestic demand and promoting household consumption are important issues advocated by the government.With the deepening of economic research,the "anomalies" in some economic phenomena are increasing,and the interpretation of classical economic theory is gradually weakening.Therefore,interdisciplinary research is gradually rising.For example,cognitive economics points out that cognitive ability has a wide impact on the intertemporal choice of individual consumption and savings.At the macro level,the improvement of all residents’ cognitive ability can significantly promote the country’s economic growth,strengthen the probability of social production and consumption;At the micro level,individual cognitive ability and cognitive bias will have a significant impact on household savings and purchase behavior.So,from a broader perspective,how to define and measure cognitive ability? Will cognitive ability also affect family consumption behavior and its internal factors? If so,how does cognitive ability affect household consumption of different characteristic groups? Are these effects different under different conditions? In order to better distinguish and explain the impact of the heterogeneity of cognitive ability on household consumption,this paper aims to excavate the internal motivation of household consumption from a cognitive perspective,in order to provide theoretical support for strengthening household consumption,improving consumption level and optimizing consumption structure,and provide reference for the formulation of relevant policies.Relevant literature research shows that cognitive ability can significantly improve the level of household consumption,and has a significant positive correlation with the consumption of non-necessities such as travel,health care and beauty.At the same time,some studies have found that the improvement of individual cognitive ability can significantly and positively promote the total household consumption and non durable consumption expenditure.However,there are still deficiencies in these studies: first,they ignore the research on the mechanism of the overall impact of cognitive ability on household consumption level,and most of them only focus on the mechanism of wealth effect.Second,it ignores the heterogeneous impact of cognitive ability on household consumption structure in different situations.Third,it ignores the research on the impact of cognitive ability on home online shopping,and ignores the possible endogenous problems.Focusing on the research theme of the impact of Chinese residents’ cognitive ability on their family consumption behavior,this paper makes a theoretical and empirical research,analyzes the impact of Chinese residents’ cognitive ability on their family consumption level,family consumption structure and family network consumption,and discusses whether there are differences in these effects under different circumstances,At the same time,the mechanism behind these effects was investigated.From the stage of encouraging consumption to the stage of both consumption level and structure,and then to the stage of vigorous development of online consumption,household consumption presents different characteristics.What role does cognitive ability play in this process? What is the impact? Specifically,this paper focuses on the following three aspects: first,does cognitive ability affect the level of household consumption? Second,does cognitive ability affect household consumption structure? Third,can cognitive ability promote home network consumption?Focusing on the above problems,this paper puts forward five research hypotheses of cognitive ability on wealth accumulation,social network,information acquisition,identity and social trust.On the premise of controlling other variables,this paper attempts to construct a theoretical analysis framework of cognitive ability and family consumption,and establish explanatory variables based on cognitive ability and family consumption level The related explanatory variables of household consumption structure and household consumption network,deeply analyze the relationship between cognitive ability and consumption level,consumption structure and online consumption,and finally conduct empirical research through the data of China’s household tracking survey in 2010,2014 and 2018.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,there is a significant positive correlation between cognitive ability and household consumption level.Among them,word(lexical)ability can effectively improve household consumption level,while the influence of mathematical ability is not stable;At the same time,the influence of word(lexical)ability and mathematical ability on the consumption level of different segments of families is also different.Heterogeneity analysis shows that gender to male can weaken the negative influence of digital ability on family consumption to some extent.Word(Lexical)ability will increase with income increase,and the household registered residence will weaken the positive influence of word ability on household consumption.The results of mechanism test show that cognitive ability can improve the level of family consumption by promoting family wealth accumulation,expanding social network,information collection and acquisition,social identity and social trust.Secondly,cognitive ability will have an impact on household consumption structure.The negative impact of comprehensive cognitive ability on the proportion of food expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the negative effect of mathematical ability,and the positive impact on the proportion of housing expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the positive effect of digital ability,The positive impact on the proportion of household equipment,supplies and services expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the positive effect of word ability,and the negative impact on the proportion of medical and health care expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the negative effect of word ability,the positive impact on the proportion of transportation and communication expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the positive effect of digital ability,and the negative impact on the proportion of other consumption expenditure in household consumption expenditure may mainly come from the negative effect of digital ability;In different income,social trust and other groups,there are some differences in the impact of cognitive ability on food consumption expenditure.In other types of consumption structure,word ability can promote household durable goods consumption expenditure,but has a significant negative impact on the proportion of non-durable goods expenditure;The influence of digital ability on the proportion of durable goods and non-durable goods is not significant;Word ability can significantly improve survival consumption,but digital ability will significantly reduce survival consumption.Word ability can significantly reduce development consumption,but digital ability can significantly improve development consumption.Word ability can significantly improve enjoyment consumption,and the impact of digital ability is not significant.Finally,there is a positive correlation between cognitive ability and home online consumption.The study found that having high cognitive ability can effectively increase the amount of household online consumption and the proportion of online consumption in the total expenditure of household consumption.Further,by studying the differences of the impact of people’s cognitive ability on their online consumption in different groups,for groups with higher trust level,higher income level or living in cities,the promotion effect of cognitive ability on their families’ online consumption is more obvious.The increase of age will weaken people’s cognitive ability to a certain extent and have a positive impact on their online consumption.